E3 2009: Sony Motion Controller Demo

June 2, 2009

Transcript

[ Music ]
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>> What I have in my hand here is a prototype of a new controller. Its final look will change. I want to stress this is an engineering prototype. But, it has a variety of buttons and internal motion sensors, but its most distinctive and cool feature is the glowing sphere on the end that the PlayStation Eye can trap. Imagine you're playing an RPG game, you choose fireball spell, the color in your hand changes and then you throw to cast your spell. Rather than listen to me just talk about it let's get started showing you some tech demos of what this thing can do. We're not going to show any video at all, everything you're going to see is live technology demonstration. Anton is going to demo and I'm going to explain what's happening on screen.
>> Hey guys!
>> So, actually I want to point out on the sides up here you can see video from different angles of Anton as he plays. So, this first demo what we have is like a virtual television set with a PlayStation Eye just like we have set up here on stage. So, you can see when Anton moves the controller here the controller moves one-to-one just as he moves. In order to let you see this better -- Anton if you can turn on the video on the television there, we're putting the PlayStation Eye's video on this virtual TV, so you can see as Anton moves from, it moves exactly as he moves. This is true one-to-one tracking. This is the first time we've ever been able to do this and we could show this better than anyone else because we have the video from the PlayStation Eye. That racket is actually in the virtual world, it's in Anton's hand.
>> Still hard.
>> So, of course...
>> No way.
>> So, sports, sports are kind of a no brainer, but you could hold anything in your hand. I do want to point out, notice how fast it's tracking his motions.
>> Okay, let's try this. Yes!
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[ Applause ]
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>> You'd also -- oh, weapons are always good.
>> Especially large ones.
>> So, my son loves this demo actually. You can imagine if he -- it could be ratchet and he could ratchet weapons in his hand while he plays. He would die for that.
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[ Laughter]
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>> Okay, we have a flash light now. Notice we have true 3D point-in. You can move around and point from any position or angle here. Okay, the flash light is pretty cool, but do you have anything with a little more firepower maybe? Oh, yeah, a foam dart -- nice shot though. More fire power.
>> Alright, let's see what else you've got.
>> Now, we're talking. Gold Desert Eagle. So, of course the PlayStation -- this new controller and motion controller in general people have thought are more of a casual experience and we expect very great casual experiences, but we also want to enable some more gamers games. We think that will be a great use to this controller too? So, if you want to switch to first person shooter mode, Anton can actually move around the room and point and shoot things.
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[ Shooting ]
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>> My hands are one so generate [inaudible].
>> We learn from Eye Toy that buttons are needed for some experiences. There are some experiences you can do without them, but some experiences there's just no other way to do.
>> There's really no other way to do this without a trigger. It just wouldn't feel right.
>> Okay, so let's see what -- anything else?
>> Yeah, one more thing. This is always difficult, oh yeah.
>> So, you can imagine the kind of special effects we could overlay with the video and the graphics here. Now, we're going to switch gears completely here. This next demo it may look simple, but it's one of the hardest things to do precisely. Anton is effectively reaching into the scene, bridging the gap between the real and virtual world. This is the foundation for the ultimate sandbox. You could build anything in it. The game development is really, really excited about this because the possibilities are limitless here. Another thing that's really difficult to do in a virtual world is drawing and in particular writing requires extreme precision. The tip of that pencil Anton is using is being tracked at sub- millimeter accuracy.
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[ Pause ]
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[ Applause ]
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>> So, the pencil shows off the precision really well, but for something a little more artistic Anton is going to move on to some more -- paint brushes here. He's actually metering out the amount of paint that's being put on the canvas using the analog trigger right now. Nice! For something like a spray paint can the angle actually matters in what he's doing here. Oh, dripping right down the wall there -- nice.
>> Of course you know if you just want to mess around.
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[ Applause ]
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>> You can do that too. So, drawing is the kind of fundamental capability, but it doesn't have to be used literally. You could use it instead, say to layout a path of objects.
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[ Pause ]
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>> Oh, open up.
>> You know you can always try again.
>> Better.
>> Other things that use drawing are selections. Selection is one of the keys to something like a real time strategy game. Finally, we have an interface on a console that lets us do real time strategy. Here you can see Anton is [inaudible] troops and then he draws the path for them to follow.
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[ Pause ]
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>> You can imagine using this for other kinds of games like football. You could draw out the route for a wide receiver to follow.
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[ Pause ]
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[ Laughter ]
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>> Blurring the minds between RTS and first person shooter here. We already showed first person shooter with Anton. Alright, Anton's going to set up the next demo and we're going to shift gears here a little bit. We're going to step out of our room here and move in to a virtual arena. We're going to show you some character control actually.
>> So, as you can see here my motions are mapped directly onto the character. When I move my sword and shield he moves them exactly as I do. Hey, everybody. Of course this is no good if you can't hit anything.
>> So, we've all seen lots of demos of swords and shields before, but the kind of precision Anton is getting here with the tip of that sword is just crazy.
>> Tickle, tickle, tickle! Of course you can do all the standard moves and you can thrust high, low, retreat, hit high and this is one of my favorites.
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[ Audience laughs ]
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[ Applause ]
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>> How many years of Nintendo is that? You can also use it in a defensive posture too.
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[ Sound effects ]
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>> Now, this is a little different. Now, we've shown you, you can see one-to-one Anton's hands moving and the virtual hands move exactly as he does.
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[ Sound effects ]
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>> You can point and throw -- no problem. You could reach around an enemy that's coming at to you, doing behind the back, really do anything you want with this. Ooh! Now, we're going to finish off with everyone's favorite in our lab's interface here, the archery mechanic. He reaches behind his back pulls out an arrow and knocks it.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Of course the tension on the string matters, so the farther I pull it back the more power I'm going to launch into this guy.
>> Ooh.
>> Alright Rick call the shot.
>> Ah, the farthest guy on the right there -- came through this style yeah. Ooh, steady.
>> See if I could...
>> Nice!
>> Have some more dramatic. There we go!
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[ Applause ]
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>> Alright, last shot, last shot. Alright!
>> If you can't see here Anton's actually dropping down to one knee Robin Hood style to finish this last shot. The camera has no problem to track him when he does that. Alright! Well, I hope this real time tech demo sparked your imagination. It certainly sparked the imagination of our development community. We're looking forward to sharing more about the motion controller with you in the near future. Thank you everyone.
>> Thank you!
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